Dismantle Civilisation

This film looks at our economic system, where huge corporations make decisions that affect all of us & planetary eco-system, with little or no accountability.
Corporations are legally bound to maximise profits,while ignoring consequences, for the financial benefit of a few individuals.
They are the epitomy of this civilisation – a culture with little or no connection to its landbase. Millions of humans live in cities. Their everyday needs delivered to them by the corporations. Children grow up never having seen a chicken, or a forest – to view themselves as consumers, their sense of self derived from what they own, working as slaves to the corporations that are chewing up the planet. Civilisation was pretty successful at turning lush forest into desert long before there were corporations, and would continue to do so if corporations were shut down. Modern corporations are just more efficient at turning all they touch to wasteland and toxic hell.
Yes, they need to be stopped, but that is just the start. We need a different kind of society, more small scale, closer to and caring for our landbases, more in touch with where our food comes from, and with real accountability for pollution, violence, ecocide etc.

“No one has the right to toxify a river. No one has the right to pollute the air. No one has the right to drive a creature to extinction, nor destroy a species’ habitat. No one has the right to profit from the labour or misery of another. No one has the right to steal resources from another.”
Derrick Jensen.

http://www.thecorporation.com/

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Thank god. It’s coming – the adventure many of us have been waiting decades – even our whole lives for. It’s been laying quietly, waiting for us, for this juncture, for thousands of years, and now it’s here.
We’re about to go back. Back to normal. Back to a life that- if we can survive to live it – might just be free. Free of all this. Free at last of push buttons, cell phones, nuclear madmen, advertising, prisons, cops, jobs, cars, bosses, screaming bombs, plastics, and every kind of daily sickness. Thunder and lightening are about to explode right overhead, about to shake our windows and walls until the whole place trembles. Some of us can already hear it and feel it. Some of us are listening. Of course it’s going to be horrible, but if this way of life continues, things can only get worse than the worst we can actually imagine now. The day will inevitably come when we wipe ourselves off the face of the Earth, and all life with us, unless things drastically change.

A fantastic positive article, by Juan Santos a writer and editor living in Los Angeles, California. Read his blog here:
http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance
Life out of balance

koy.aa.nis.qat.si (Hopi) [n] 1. crazy life 2. life out of balance 3. life disintegrating 4. life in turmoil 5. a way of life that calls for another way of living.

ko.yan.nis.qatsi (de la lengua Hopi), 1.vida loca 2.vida en tumulto 3.vida en desintegración 4.vida desequilibrada 5.una condición de vida que clama por otra manera de vivir.

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PEAK EVERYTHING Author – Richard Heinberg The latest of Heinberg’s books chronicling the depletion of not only our carbon based resources but loads of other important commodities too. easy to read and authoritative. £ 11.99 Click here to view full book details on eco-logic books website

Other books by Richard Heinberg include:

THE PARTY’S OVER Author – R. Heinberg Another peak oilers’ favourite. Substatially revised and subtitled Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. Heinberg has written several books on the topic – this is his most pressing and strident… £ 10.95 Click here to view full book details on eco-logic books website

Although the title, The Party’s Over, implies that civilization’s Oil Age has been a party (tell this to the indigenous cultures of the world, the polar bears or any of the 100+ species being driven to extinction EVERY DAY, people in any country where useful resources have been discovered, or even the poorer sectors of society in the West) this is a pretty good introduction to the concept of peak oil. If you are new to the concept, read this book, but bear in mind that although oil has enabled humans to manufacture, trade and acquire more ‘stuff’, at what cost to our landbases, bodies, souls and freedoms? Civilisation’s discovery of petrochemicals is akin to a three year old child discovering a flamethrower in the garage!

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Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.

Read the full article.

As civilisation starts to unravel, the global food system is likely to get increasingly unviable. How did we allow ourselves to come to rely on huge corporations selling us industrial foodstuffs, containing little or no nutrition, and shipped half way round the world? If you aren’t growing some fruit and veg, you’d best start thinking about allotments. Food prices, along with anything that depends upon oil, are increasing.

We have two obvious choices. Either try to cope in our present civilisation model (work, buy, consume, dies), relying on the global economic infrastructure to supply our increasingly expensive needs, and watch the system continue to eat the planet. Or try something different. Create vibrant local economies, co-operate with others around you, listen to the land, grow some of your own food while supporting local organic and permaculture farmers, resist centralised control, oppose developments that undermine the ability of your local landbase to sustain you, your families, your neighbours and wildlife.

In the UK, the Transition Town movement is starting to make progress. And some people are starting to grasp the immensity of what needs to be done, and the opportunity to mould our culture into a diverse society that benefits people and the land on which we rely for our survival. Dare to dream, and to use your energy and time to make those dreams into reality. Isn’t it time you and your friends started digging up that car park, and planting fruit trees?

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The Power of Community:

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.

A Community Solution project.

An inspiring film. Civilization is going to crash. It is not going to be easy – and the longer it takes to crash, the more unpleasant it is likely to be. Most of humanity rely on oil for almost everything, and it is running out. Oil has allowed us to overshoot the earths carrying capacity, at the expense of pretty much everything else. We cannot afford to carry on using oil, but huge numbers of people simply would not know where to begin living a life without it. And its use has powered a society of centralisation. We are no longer people but consumers, workers, cogs in a massive machine, manipulated and controlled by those at the top of the heirarchies.

Society needs to change yesterday, and not simply because oil is a finite resource, or because to carry on burning fossil fuels has even more serious repurcussions than a collapsed economic system. We need to learn to live WITH each other, the earth and other creatures. We need to relearn to value things beyond their economic value. We need to accept that we will die, and that is the nature of life, and start again to value each and every moment, each and every life, each and every relationship as sacred and wonderful. We need to re-learn how to listen to the land, and recreate a world of local tribes and communities, without the power structures we have been taught are necessary.

There is much to do. If we wish to do more than survive, we must start now redesigning our communities, our homes, our hearts and minds. We must liberate ourselves and the world from the death-hold of civilisation, creating a new society of joy and freedom, while also doing what we can to stop those who are blinded by money, and to defend and protect our natural heritage.

Bringing down civilization first and foremost consists of liberating ourselves by driving the colonizers out of our own hearts and minds; seeing civilization for what it is, seeing those in power for who and what they are, and seeing power for what it is. Bringing down civilization then consists of actions arising from that liberation, not allowing those in power to predetermine the ways we oppose them, instead living with and by – and using – the tools and rules of those in power only when we choose, and not using them only when we choose not to. It means fighting them on our terms when we choose, and on their terms when we choose, when it is convenient and effective to do so.
Derrick Jensen, Endgame.

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It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said, “It is too late already.”What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds, possibly thousands. “Moulin” is a word I had only just become familiar with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did previously.

Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of Niagra Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts on ice and Greenland in particular.

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3997

Some scientists are now predicting that seas may rise by up to 7 metres by 2013. And still the powers that be are seeking to continue with business as usual. This whole industrial civilisation needs to stop NOW. It impoverishes the lives of almost all it touches, turning human animals into wage slaves to the machine and nonhuman animals and forest, oceans, landscapes into ‘resources’ and then barren, dead wastelands….

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Another fantastic movie:

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All your life mother culture has been whispering in your ear the lies and fairy tales that make it all seem normal. Occassionally you may catch a glimpse of reality, but you have been well conditioned, you shake your head and carry on shopping, working or watching TV. Humans are the pinnacle of evolution, and this society is the ultimate acheivement of humanity - right?

But perhaps, like many of us the doubts just wont go away.
There is something inherently wrong with the way we live. So many single issue problems to campaign against. You start to question your role as consumer or worker – why should you work to pay to have a roof over your head? Why should some people have more power than others? The mantra of economic growth starts to ring hollow in your ears, and you just cant get excited anymore about the things you used to – new purchases, christmas, tv shows. It all seems so shallow and meaningless. If only you could put all those nagging doubts together and get a clear overview of society, perhaps you could come up with an alternative way?
But where to start?

Daniel Quinns book, Ishmael, is a pretty good place to start. A dialogue between a gorilla and his human student, the book poses some powerful questions about civilisation, humanity’s role on the planet, religion and how we got here. Labelling our culture as ‘takers’, and other less destructive cultures as ‘leavers’, Ishmael explains it like it is in a clear simple way that will leave you changed. Not a ‘how to’ book, but it will prod you into questioning everything you’ve ever been told.

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Interview with Derrick Jensen.

Maximum Leverage:

This is the first part of a 6 part interview. The other parts are available on Youtube, links below.

Pathology of the Personal

What’s Your Threshold

Modern-Day Slavery

Whatever It Takes

The 3rd Alternative

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THE RED PILL is a scratch video, a collage of clips from Hollywood feature films. It juxtaposes critical dialog spoken by the actors that we have made gods of, with powerful imagery produced by the studios that we have made billionaires of — redited, remixed, and recontextualized, to change the way you think about the world, to challenge you to think of new ways of changing the world.

We got all fired up when we first saw each of these sampled scenes in isolation, but then we never got up off of our asses to do anything about it — we didn’t make the necessary connections between the silver screen and our own lives. The goal of THE RED PILL is to spur us on to action; it is a post-modern call to battle, for our planet, for our communities, for our freedom: it is an audiovisual international anthem.

THE RED PILL is a multimedia culture jam that takes the hour-and-a-half long commercials for consumer culture, this propaganda that passes as entertainment — and then, in proud guerilla hip hop tradition, reappropriates them them and forges them into a weapon of war in the fight against those very same advertising agencies and their corporate clients that would buy and sell our very souls.

Part one:

Part 2:

Part 3:

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